Over a twenty-year period, the now legendary Jean-Pierre Léaud played the alter ego of French nouvelle vague director François Truffaut up to five times. As Antoine Doinel, he first appears in Truffaut’s breakthrough film, The 400 Blows (1959). 

Léaud was plucked from an audition of several hundred children—he was fourteen at the time—after an ad by Truffaut in the newspaper. A year later, the audience lifted him on their shoulders after their film’s victory parade at Cannes, which expressed Truffaut’s lackluster childhood.

At 18, Léaud again portrayed Antoine Doinel in the 29-minute Antoine et Colette, as a segment of the five-part compilation film L’amour à vingts ans. He is now a young adult in love. Three more films follow, Baisers volés (1968), Domicile conjugal (1970), and L’amour en fuite (1979).